


Real People

by budgewrites



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-05-15 03:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19287022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/budgewrites/pseuds/budgewrites
Summary: On conquering demons, remembering how to live, and coming home.





	1. Liore, Again

“Killing him won’t solve anything!”

“Stay out of it, Al! You don't understand.”

The dust and grit in the air was thick enough to choke. Scar’s hands were clenched, shoulders square as he stared down the last two preventing his completion of the Stone: the younger Elric and the Crimson Alchemist. Kimblee was restrained for the moment, suspended in a stone trap of Al’s design.

Alphonse could never possibly understand the truth of Kimblee. As long as he lived, people would die. Scar's people. Liore’s people. The next state Amestris strangled and snuffed out with its military might. If Scar could rid them of their most willing weapon, he would.

He had to, for his brother.

“Leave, Alphonse. Find Edward, and get out of the city.”

“I won’t! Not as long as—”

Alphonse was interrupted by the sound of falling rock and crumbling debris. A moment’s surprise was all Kimblee needed to pull something away from Al’s armor. He tossed it in Scar’s direction, and it wasn’t until it snapped open that Scar realized it was Edward’s State Alchemist assigned watch. Tiny red shards spilled out, drawn automatically to Scar’s arm through thin air.

The sensation was excruciating. Scar nearly collapsed as the shards of Red Stone were absorbed slowly into his flesh by the transmutation circle on his arm. Cold sweat formed on his brow and his knee slammed down into the stone street. His eyes slipped in and out of focus as he looked past the red glow of his arm. Kimblee was muttering something…

“Al—” Scar gasped, struggling back to his feet as Kimblee’s hands grasped Al’s arms. There was a great flash of light from the boy’s body, followed by a bloodcurdling scream.

Scar scrambled, breath still strained as he dashed for Kimblee, who was still holding onto the armor. His shoulder connected with Crimson’s sternum, and there was an audible crack. Kimblee hit the ground almost immediately, a wheezed gasp ripped from his throat.

On a level playing ground, he didn't stand a chance. Weapons of the State were soft. Coddled.

Scar wasted no time. This was finished. He followed Kimblee down, grasping the other man's arm. Familiar red sparks flew, and the air was filled with the ugly sounds of flesh separating from bone as Scar ripped Kimblee's arm clean off. He ignored the soldier’s screams as he grabbed his collar, forcing him to meet his eyes.

“What did you do?”

Kimblee's manic gaze slid over Scar’s shoulder. Scar turned to see Alphonse, the metal of his legs fading to an ashen, sickly black.

“What's… I don't feel so good…”

Alphonse’s tiny voice cracked, and panic started to rise in Scar’s chest.

He slammed Kimblee into the ground.

“ _What did you do?_ ”

“You have plenty of time…” Kimblee muttered. His eyes slid in and out of focus, the ghost of a grin still splitting his face. “Metal really is best to work with… He'll react slowly with the oxygen in the air, and the reaction will spread until…”

He lifted his fist, grimy and calloused with tiny burns and bits of soot, then opened it as he made a crude explosion sound with his mouth. Kimblee's grin widened, rancid breath too close for comfort as he laughed quietly in Scar's face.

Scar had heard enough. He slammed the Crimson Alchemist’s head into the gravel beneath them. Red sparks flew once again, and with a dull, damp thud, Kimblee was dead.

He rushed to his feet, attention turned to Alphonse. Scar levelled his voice. There was no need to scare the boy further.

“Stay still, Alphonse. I'm not sure what's happening, but we don't want to make it any worse. Just try not to exert yourself.”

Scar reached for the armor with his brother’s hand, hoping to gain some knowledge of his composition.

“I wouldn't touch him if I were you.”

His stomach dropped as Lust’s voice drifted from the shadows across the street, and his hand froze. He whirled around, not even having noticed her approach. The world kept spinning as he turned, dehydration and exhaustion setting into a sickly kind of mania. Her timing was always remarkably inconvenient. Now more than ever, Lust's appearance heralded a sense of dread in Scar. What was she doing here?

Why wasn't Gluttony with her?

“The circle on your arm can't do anything to undo Kimblee's alchemy, certainly not without disturbing the bond of the boy’s soul.” She crossed the empty street, hips leisurely swaying as she approached.

A whimper echoed in Alphonse’s hollow body. Scar's mind was frantically sorting through possible solutions, but nothing was sticking. His eyes locked with Lust’s as she continued.

“If Edward were here, he could theoretically transmute Alphonse's body to some other substance, disrupting Kimblee's alchemy and stopping the transmutation,” Lust floated to a slow stop a touch too close for comfort. She caught his eye through lowered lashes. Scar had never been close enough to notice the unnatural slit of her pupils, and hearing her speak at such a proximity only deepened the icy dread in his chest.

“Leave him,” her voice dropped. Scar froze as she reached for his clenched fist. Her skin was cool against his. Soft. It took two of her hands to encase one of his. Details he was simultaneously aware of and far too distracted to process.

Wrong.

Everything froze. Her head tipped to the side. Her lips parted. He hated that he noticed.

“He’s a lost cause,” she continued quietly, “You have to think of yourself now, and your own goal of completing the Stone.”

“Of course,” he snarled. The fear in Scar’s stomach flared to anger. Why else would she be here? He ripped his hand away, ignoring that she was briefly thrown off balance.

It was time to let go of any lingering hope for who she could be.

“Leave us be,” he snapped, “I don’t need help, especially not from you.” He marched past her and began removing his green robe.

“Why not me?” She almost sounded offended, as if she had any right. “We share something. You can trust me—"

“We share nothing.” Scar glared at Lust over his shoulder, his eyes meeting hers to make sure the point sunk in. Her jaw tightened at his harshness, and he could see anger setting in her brow. “The woman I knew would never have been so heartless and cold.”

Lust fell silent. Scar turned away to cut off any response she may have pulled together. He didn't care. Scar could feel her eyes boring into his back, but he ignored her. Not a single genuine thought had ever come out of her mouth. Lust was a woman of empty words and amoral complacency.

Alphonse was dying, and there was no one else for hours who might be able to help him in time. Scar tore the right sleeve off his tunic and untied the rope around his waist. He had one desperate shot at this, and he was going to take it, Stone be damned.

“I'm sorry I don't live up to your memories.” Bitterness tainted Lust's voice when she broke her silence, and Scar frowned to himself.

“I would never have expected you to,” he responded flatly.

Lie.

But an easy one to tell, when he was focused elsewhere.

“Sharing her face means nothing. You aren't the woman my brother tried to resurrect.” Scar didn't dare look at her as he made his preparations.

“But if I use the Philosopher's Stone to be human, I'll become her.”

The soft note of hope in her words threatened to squeeze something in Scar’s resolve.

“No, you wouldn't.”

“How do you know?”

Scar looked up then, expression stoney in spite of the obvious hurt he had just inflicted.

“The dead never come back to life.” He spoke as if it rested the matter, his stare daring her to challenge the reality of their situation.

A bitter note came with that reality. Scar knew, in the furthest recesses of his mind, that he'd yet to truly accept it. The man who had crossed a wasteland for the locket currently tucked into his robe couldn't take it. He held onto that scrap of hope like he was starving, like one day it could all fall into place and she would wake up like the last fifteen years had never happened at all.

When it became clear that Lust was through with pushing back, he turned back to Alphonse. “Al, you should sit down.”

The boy had remained silent through Scar and Lust’s exchange, but he got down as Scar instructed. His tiny voice, meant for Scar’s ears alone, rang through the armor once again.

“I'm scared…”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

There wasn't even time to feel anger at the injustice of it all. Scar could process that later, if there was still a later. If Kimblee was to be believed, and Lust clearly assumed he was, the boy had been rigged to explode. He crouched down beside Al and handed him his corded belt.

“Tie this around my arm. As close to the shoulder as you can, and as tight as you can manage.”

Alphonse nodded quietly and obeyed. Words seemed to be coming with difficulty. Scar didn't mind. The rope, tied tight with the armor's strength, burned his skin and made his arm tingle. He needed to stay conscious long enough to make it to the circle’s edge.

Beyond that, little else mattered.

“Lie down. And don't move.”

Scar took a deep breath in a desperate attempt to steady himself, but there was little he could do to settle his nerves. Lust cut in again,

“What are you doing?”

The note of panic in her voice indicated that she knew exactly what he was doing. Scar ignored her.

“Tell me, dammit—”

She moved to approach them, and Scar reached into his robes, withdrawing the silver locket.

“ _Don't_ ,” Scar snapped.

Lust stopped in her tracks as soon as she caught sight of the charm. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but the words never came. Scar shifted his focus back to Alphonse, who finally spoke up.

“Scar… What _are_ you gonna do?”

Al's voice was enough to cause him pause. Scar's shoulders fell. His arm was starting to go numb, and they needed to move, but he did his best to be calm for the boy’s sake.

“The only thing we can.”

The lights behind the armor’s eyes flickered, and Scar muttered one more apology as he tied the locket to a loop in the armor. He rested his right hand on Alphonse.

The Stone wasn't bound by the standard states of matter. It could be anything. This could work.

Immediately, Scar could feel Kimblee’s alchemy at work. Slow and steady, metals were reworking themselves in a chain reaction. Blackened chunks of armor were left soft and chalky. He had destroyed this metal before. He knew what it was supposed to feel like.

He activated his arm, and his hand’s point of contact with the armor glowed brilliant red. His eyes closed against it as pain spidered through his arm. Scar barely stifled a cry as his hand contracted against the metal of Alphonse's body. It seemed to take forever. Flesh and bone tore itself apart, and his vision clouded until it went entirely black. A scream ripped from his throat, but he didn't hear it.

Then it was over.

Choking on his own breath, Scar nearly collapsed against Alphonse. His throat felt swollen, and his eyes watered as he struggled to find composure. A shiver gripped him from head to toe. When his eyes finally opened, the world was spinning. Lights burst in his vision.

“Now what?”

Her voice surprised him, quiet and anxious. Why was _she—_

No... That was Lust. He was in Liore. Alphonse was dying. There wasn't any time.

Scar's legs shook under his weight as he forced himself to his feet. A frightful amount of blood dripped from what remained of his arm, but it was a cleaner injury than the blast that had first taken it ten years ago.

“That arm was given to me by my brother,” he said, finding his footing and grasping at the stump of his shoulder. “As Ishbalans died, he absorbed their lives into the circles on his body. Eventually, there would be enough lives to be condensed into one Stone.”

Lust’s lips turned down in a tight frown.

“By creating the Stone inside himself, he could collect lives slowly, and the completed Stone could never be taken away.” A quiet sort of awe coming over her as she mused, “A gift that he passed to you...”

But Scar’s focus wasn't on Lust. He addressed Alphonse one last time.

“I need to get to the edge of the circle. When it's over, get out of the city and find your brother. Stay away from the soldiers.”

“Scar, please… You can't. It's not worth it. Not for me…” Alphonse trailed off as Scar wrapped his torn sleeve around his shoulder. It did little to stop the blood, but there was nothing more he could do. He lingered in silence for a moment before turning to approach Kimblee's corpse. He didn't need to worry about Alphonse’s protests. The boy couldn't move for risk of setting off the bomb, and the increasing softness of his body would soon render his legs unable to support him. He had no choice in the matter.

Lust, however, desperately needed to find a foothold.

“ _Wait,_ ” she demanded as Scar walked away. She only followed when it became clear that she was being ignored. “You can’t possibly expect to transmute this boy into the Philosopher's Stone!”

“Better that than a bomb. You said transmuting the armor would save him. This is the only way I could help.”

Talking required a great deal of effort. Scar was well aware of his legs wobbling beneath him, of the cold sweat on his brow.

“And what about the actual Stone? You're just handing it over to the Elric brothers when you're done?”

“If by some miracle this works, the Stone will be theirs. They can do with it what they want—” Scar was interrupted by the whip of Lust’s talons on either side of his head, inches from his ears.

“I'm not letting you do that.”

She was desperate. Scar took a steadying breath, examining the claws poised at his throat. Lust wouldn't kill him. She had nothing to gain from it. Yet, she persisted.

“I _need_ you to make the real Philosopher's Stone. Do you understand? Don't waste all your work, all your brother's work, just to save _one boy._ ”

Scar turned to glare at Lust, eyes dark and weary.

“If you kill me where I stand, you’re only that much further from your goal.” His voice lowered. “And this deluded identity you’ve created for yourself.”

The wounding words landed. Lust’s eyes widened. Maybe they were just words, but they hurt in an undeniably physical way. It wasn't anything Lust was used to, but the discovery of her humanity mattered to her in ways beyond anything she could hope to express.

Mere hours ago she was nothing and nobody, but now the blurred images floating in her mind carried context. Lust had lived. She had a place to call her own, a God, a family, and all of it condensed and fixated on what scarce threads remained of her life.

 _Her_ _life._

And here was this man, hardly recognizable from the conversations and moments taunting her from just beyond her mind’s eye, denying her humanity and denying her the Stone, _her_ Stone, in the same breath.

Scar remained still as her claws retracted, catching ever so slightly on his cheek. Lust winced. The brief physical contact only brought more unpleasant images before her eyes, the same memories of illness and death that always plagued her. Caught off guard, she froze until the flashback passed.

Why did it have to be those memories that came to her so often?

“You tell me I'm delusional, yet you brought me the locket. You sought me out, you wanted answers. You _wanted_ me to be someone,” she called after him. Lust wouldn't let him get away with flipping the script.

Scar paused briefly as he struggled to hoist Kimblee over his good shoulder. Lust pressed on.

“For a man who's been questioning me on sight for the better part of a year, you're quite sure of yourself.”

She could tell he was frustrated with her, but Lust didn't have a reason to care. How could he deny it? He had come to her before she could have even known who he was or what he meant, but he had always, first and foremost, wanted answers that she didn't have.

When Scar finally managed to support Kimblee's weight well enough to carry him, he turned to meet Lust’s eyes. Her slow simmering anger faded as he faced her. He was exhausted. She could see it and hear it.

“A woman of Ishbal would never place her selfish ends over the life of a child. There is nothing more I need to know.”

It would have been easy to write it off as nonsense. And she did, for the most part. How could she trust anything Scar had to say about who she was supposed to be? The passing of time was cruel, but it dusted in gold everything it left behind, especially things taken too soon.

Lust knew who she was. No one could convince her to doubt the memories that now drifted through her mind, many clear as day.

She thought of the passing comments made by her colleagues. How chasing an old life was never worth it, how it only ever led to hurt and disappointment. That they would never be good enough, especially not for the people who remembered how things used to be. How _they_ used to be. Master had said as such.

But Master had lied before.

It was with this thought that she followed Scar. She made it no secret, but kept her distance. From Liore’s unstable rooftops, she could see it. The Amestrian death machine, a sea of blue coats and armored trucks, lined up barely a kilometer out. The wall of men stood frightfully still as Scar neared the city’s edge. Lust was impressed when he managed to hoist Kimblee’s corpse up a fire escape and onto the roof of an abandoned home.

The bate would be tempting, but Lust frowned as Scar tossed Kimblee over the edge, well within their sights. They had specific orders not to move in. Pride had told her so.

Then they started moving.

Lust’s jaw dropped as the faint shouts of men reached her ears. Suddenly, she could feel her heart in her throat. Scar had bolted down the empty street, running along the thread of his own transmutation circle, deeply cut into the streets beneath them. Lust kept her high ground to survey the situation as it escalated. As she bounded from rooftop to rooftop with unnatural ease, one thing was clear:

Scar couldn't outrun them.

Lust dropped down to street level, snarling as she rolled her ankle on the uneven street. The pain quickly vanished, and it took no effort to catch up to Scar.

“They had orders not to move in!” she shouted.

“So Ishbala wills it.” He remained fixated on the street ahead. Lust scoffed.

“You have a squad closing in one street to your—"

“I FOUND HIM!”

Too late. A dozen things happened at once. Lust skidded to a stop, sharpened senses tracking the sound of the soldier's voice down the side street to her immediate right. Scar was beyond the line of sight. The soldier opened fire. Lust scowled and braced herself as the searing heat of bullets slammed into her skin. Her hands flicked open, readying her claws to cut him down—

Lust's attempt to manage the situation was abruptly cut off when something enormous and _green_ blindsided her, lifting her clean off the ground. She was unused to being so gracelessly manhandled, and the impact dragged a sharp yelp from her throat.

It wasn't until they both hit the ground, well outside the immediate range of gunfire, that she realized what had happened.

Scar. Scar had cut back across the alley to push her out of harm's way. For a hair’s breadth, she froze, agape. That was… _brave._ It was selfless, it was...

It was preposterously idiotic.

Lust scrambled to her feet just as the gunman rounded the corner into the main street, his squadmates hot on his heels. She made quick work of them. Razor sharp claws cut through the soldiers before they had a moment to respond. They were dead before they hit the ground.

She returned to Scar, a thread of fear splitting her chest. Had the fool been hit? She fell to her knees and gingerly turned him onto his back. He was breathing. No new wounds were visible. Lust's anxiety settled, if only by a margin.

“...Scar?” She watched him, wide eyed and struggling for how to react to what had just transpired. It had been such a needless act of gallantry. It could have cost him his life! Lust should have been _angry_.

But she wasn’t.

Scar coughed, a dry and ugly sound, and held onto the stump of his arm as he struggled to get partially upright. Lust reacted without a thought, arms reaching behind his back to help him sit. He looked so pale...

“You know it takes more than that to get rid of me…”

The hush in her own voice surprised her. Lust watched Scar intently, brow creased in confusion. For all of his talk of how deplorable she supposedly was, a single gesture had managed to speak over everything else.

“My body just… moved.” Scar spoke as if he were also still trying to come to terms with it. His breath was ragged, and he avoided her gaze. Lust found herself still flailing for words. She had only just discovered a past, a family which had been taken from her. But here was _proof_ , tangible and breathing, that someone had once cared for her.

Lust, a corrupt and cold husk good for so few things, none of them kind, had once been loved enough to die for.

Not in the possessive, predatory ways men had over her current lifetime. Not in lecherous remarks thinly guised as words of affection, or in grand acts of what was supposed to be romance by stupid Amestrian alchemists, but in the simplest and most human of ways.

“Can you stand?” she asked, suddenly aware that her hands were still on him. Lust pushed herself to her feet when he nodded. One hand remained outstretched, should he need it. It was a remarkably simple gesture, but it dawned on Lust that it wasn't something she had done before. Offered help.

Scar struggled stubbornly on his own, and Lust realized he was favoring one of his legs. A bullet had grazed his ankle. Begrudgingly, he took her hand, and Lust pulled him to his feet with inhuman ease. She pursed her lips as she watched him stand. His balance was failing, and his eyes appeared glazed over, far away. No man could survive the transmutation he was about to attempt in this state, never mind complete it. His only saving grace might be that much of the work had already been done, but Lust wasn't holding her breath.

If Alphonse had already died, she would have heard it, right?

Scar continued his trek, albeit slower than before. It seemed the interruption was all it took for exhaustion to take hold. His strength was fading. _He_ was fading. Lust followed close behind, half expecting him to pass out of exhaustion at any moment.

A low, ominous rumble made itself known somewhere to their flank. Dread sank through Lust's system as the sound became clearer and closer, metal grinding against the ruined streets.

She had seen tanks on the city's outskirts. They had brought tanks to dispatch civilians.

If Scar could hear the approach, he was ignoring it. Lust silently weighed her options, eyes frantically searching the surrounding streets for a sign that they may be caught. If she peeled off to dispatch the tank, Scar was a wide open target. If she stayed, they ran risk of crossing its path.

“I'm going to clear your way,” she decided out loud. The heavy machine sound was only getting closer. Scar knew to stay low and out of the main streets. Maybe their chances were slim, but if anyone could finally complete this task, it was him. When she moved to jog ahead, Scar spoke up.

“Lust,” she turned, meeting his eyes for the first time since they had separated from Alphonse. His voice was like gravel. He seemed to struggle for a moment, frown shifting into something difficult to read. “Make sure you get out of the city.”

It was tempting to respond with a quip, but Lust bit her tongue. Her Stone was all but lost. She couldn't go back to the others. She had no clear goal, anymore. All that remained in the foreseeable future was helping Scar fulfill his.

Lust nodded, but she couldn't fight the anxious knot in her chest that this was it. She had barely found someone who had known _her,_ and now… she was about to lose him in the same day. For a moment, the only movement in the street was the warm breeze kicked up by the buildings surrounding them. It became evident that Scar had nothing else to say.

Lust turned away, dashing toward the sound of the approaching mechanized unit. She could disable them and draw enough attention away from Scar that hopefully he could reach his destination without further injury. Lust returned to the rooftops, crouching to survey the situation. Two streets from Scar, her suspicions were confirmed. One tank, backed by six infantrymen.

She glanced over her shoulder, but Scar had already disappeared from her sight. Lust leapt from her perch without hesitation. There was nothing they could do to hurt her. She landed lightly behind one of the footsoldiers, snatching his wrists as he turned. A piercing scream alerted his comrades as Lust’s claws rent his hands. The man collapsed, his rifle hitting the ground uselessly at his side, but she had already moved on. She cut knees and wrists with pinpoint accuracy, rendering the soldiers useless. She took no joy in their pain, but their lives were better used for the Stone.

She was already through with the infantry when the tank’s guns turned on her. The barrels were the first to go, cut clean off as Lust lunged for the roof door. She sliced it open and dropped inside, making quick work of the engineers.

It was difficult to keep track of time, but she stayed along the lines of the transmutation circle. Lust continued through the city, winding through main streets and cutting down any blue coat she came upon. She didn't bother being subtle; the more attention on her, the less there would be on Scar.

The familiar red glow seeped into the trench at Lust’s feet, flowing toward the city’s center like a burst dam.

He made it.

Lust broke into a sprint as the light rose higher and higher, and she didn't stop until she was across the circle’s perimeter on the edge of the city.

It was beautiful and terrifying. Lust turned to watch in solemn silence as vast curtains of brilliant red rose from the earth and swallowed Liore. Buildings and men alike vanished into thin air, swept into the city’s center by an enormous explosion of force reaching far into the clouds.

Then, as instantly as the crimson light had appeared, nothing remained of the city of Liore.


	2. Underground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An army is dead, vanished into the sand. Their killer holds onto life by a thread of hope which isn't his.

It was as if, for an instant, Scar was someplace else. The world was harsh white, and there was no sense of up or down. He was weightless, but grounded. It was as if something enormous, something  _ terrible _ lurked behind him, a sick sort of dread dropping into his body like lead. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and Scar whirled around to see—

Nothing. 

As soon as he processed the thought, the world shifted again.

Sensation was slow to return. Opening his eyes felt like an insurmountable chore, and his head was throbbing. His heart raced, but he barely felt it. There was pain  _ everywhere. _

Scar lay facedown in the sand. It stuck to his lips and clung in his hair, but he couldn't have noticed. Before him was the vast emptiness that was once Liore. Even the transmutation circle had torn itself apart.

Footsteps? He was being moved, turned over to face the sun. God, not the sun… His heavy eyes furrowed more tightly shut. He coughed, a dusty and fragile sound. Even considering where he was or what had just happened was out of the question. 

Lust could hardly believe he was alive. Barely, perhaps, but alive. She rested a hand on his forehead. He was burning, but barely damp with sweat. Her medical knowledge of humans was limited to the abstract, but it was more than clear that he desperately needed to get out of the sun.

Sloth would be after her, soon. Pride was preoccupied, and they wouldn't send Gluttony. Lust scanned the horizon nervously. There was no sign of the others, but…

A large shape she could only assume to be Alphonse was getting closer.

“It worked…” she murmured for no one but herself.

Edward was in tow, a good deal back, but she didn't have time to wait for them. Carefully, she lifted Scar out of the sand. He moved occasionally, grunted, but was mostly unresponsive. They needed to get to the irrigation tunnels. Scar may have survived the transmutation, but they were still cornered in the middle of nowhere, under the pursuit of two hostile parties.

“Put him down!”

Three hostile parties. Lust glanced up in shock as the tiny voice of Alphonse Elric lashed out at her barely ten meters out. She'd never seen him move with such ease.

“Alphonse I'm not going to hurt him—"

“What  _ are _ you gonna do, then?” Alphonse reached into his armor and produced the locket. The fear that spiked through her chest at the mere sight of the damn thing was enough to make her to listen. The boy was mad! He had been through an ordeal, but this was no way to react. Lust set Scar gently down before backing away, her eyes locked on the silver trinket in Al’s fist.

By now, Edward had caught up. He was doubled over, hands on his knees and gasping for breath. He looked more bewildered than Lust.

“Al…” There was a note of warning in Ed’s voice as Alphonse crouched by Scar. Lust glanced between the boys. Al spoke up as he carefully pulled Scar’s robes away from the open wound of his shoulder.

“If we leave him alone like this, he’ll die,” he explained, with a great deal of upset, “I have to help.”

“Help how?” Edward was clearly nervous and teetering on the edge of anger. 

“Marcoh healed patients with his Red Stones. If something that small could help people, the least I can do is make sure Scar survives until we get help.”

“Don't be stupid, Al, we don't know how that works! For all we know, you can't use it without hurting yourself!”

The sickly remains of Scar’s right arm were exposed, raw and oozing. He still hadn't stirred. Lust held her breath as she watched, nervously eyeing her locket.

“This is my choice, brother,” Alphonse muttered, looking down at Scar. He brought his hands together, and the familiar red glow hummed in his armor. The markings of the Stone shone on his body. Edward was horrified. Lust was struck dumb.

The skin of Scar’s arm began to stretch and knit itself back together. It was grotesque, but Lust couldn't tear her eyes away. In a matter of moments, the wound had closed completely. In the heavy silence that followed, Alphonse let out a laugh, relieved and awestruck. He whipped around to regard his brother, manic but delighted. 

“Brother, it worked!” he repeated when he wasn't getting a reaction from Edward. 

“He finished it...” Lust murmured to herself, still struggling for words. Right before her eyes, the boy had created human flesh from _ nothing.  _ And there wasn't a scratch on him. A true Philosopher's Stone was bound to the soul of Alphonse Elric. Thousands of lives, forced together and optimized into a perfect alchemic catalyst. 

“Okay, Al, that's enough. We don’t know enough about that thing, and if we get caught with him, we’re dead meat.” Edward barely spoke above a whisper.

“Brother...”

“Edward is right, Alphonse,” Lust cut in. “You've done enough. We need to get underground, and you need to run. It won’t be long before everyone’s after you, both my colleagues and the State.”

“What about you? I thought you were after the Stone too.” Edward was tense. Lust hardly blamed him. She sighed, eyes settling briefly on Alphonse. It was out of her hands, now. Scar had ensured that from the moment he tied that locket to the armor. The goal of this miserable life was literally standing in front of her, dangling just beyond her reach. She had ruined her alliance with the others, and she’d made miserable work of collecting the Stone for herself.

How could she even move forward, now?

“I will take Scar underground.” Quiet defeat was evident in her voice. “I’m familiar enough with the surrounding camps that we’ll be able to find the care he needs.” A voice in the back of her mind still strongly doubted he would pull through at all. Most bizarre was how the thought frightened her. Maybe she was just afraid of being left alone.

As she explained, Alphonse lifted Scar from the sand. He grunted weakly, but only stirred. Al spoke up,

“How do we know we can trust you?” He was making his way for the center of the city. Lust and Edward both followed.

“I suppose you can’t, but any purpose he may have served toward my own goals now lies with you. I’ve no use for him.” Not practically, anyway. There were questions she had for him. Lingering thoughts, vague recollections that were only now starting to take shape. Whether he would indulge her was the real question.

She could tell she hadn’t sold Alphonse. There was no accounting for how fond the boy was of Scar, especially now that he had been willing to give his life for Al. Thinking back, she ought not be surprised. Less than an hour ago she had insisted that the boy’s life was a lost cause.

The thought brought a tiny stir of regret in to the back of her throat. Should she say as much? She didn’t know how to put it. Lust pushed her discomfort to the back of her mind. She wouldn’t have to see the boys for much longer, for better and for worse.

“Edward, will you find us an entrance?” she asked quietly.

He nodded, running ahead to clap his hands and flatten them against the ground. A ripple of light radiated through the sand, and the earth shifted beneath them. Ed glanced off to his side. With another clap, the ground before him reshaped and descended into stairs, connecting with the hidden walkways that had been the Liorans’ escape route.

Alphonse still seemed reluctant as he led their unlikely party underground.

“Brother, what if we took him back to Resembool?”

“What?!”

“He could be comfortable there! And Winry and Granny could fix his arm—"

“Al,” Edward cut off his younger brother, “Like it or not, Scar’s a fugitive. We can't bring him anywhere near the Resembool. That's the end of it.”

The lights behind Al’s eyes drooped. Ed sighed, his anger deflating.

“If anyone finds out what really happened, you'll get hauled off by the military. We need to look after each other. No more using the Stone until we've learned more.”

Slowly, Alphonse nodded as they descended into partial darkness. The stone walkway was welcoming and cool after they had baked in the sun. 

Liore’s water system rushed by in an underground canal. Alphonse waded into the water, lowering Scar’s overheated body into the gentle current to cool off. He stirred once again, but did not respond further. Edward turned to Lust, his voice lowered and confrontational.

“I met some of your friends down here, earlier.”

Lust fixed him with a blank stare. He wasn't going to receive any answers he didn't ask for.

“How did they know about this tunnel?”

She frowned. It wasn't the right time to reveal the identity of her master. Not to the Elrics.

And certainly not to Scar.

“We've had a hand in Liore for years. Surely you recall. I learned of it while Cornello was still alive.” The name left a sour taste in her mouth, but it was apparently a good enough lie for Edward. With another glower, he turned away from Lust and called to his brother.

“Come on, Al. Whatever’s left of the soldiers will be sniffing around here any minute.”

Alphonse looked back to them with a start, still holding Scar's heat sick body in the water.

“But he should stay in the water. I think he's overheated—”

“Then Lust can help. We're going.”

Lust wasn't thrilled with her decisions being made for her, but Edward was right. Alphonse finally seemed to be accepting that. She pursed her lips as she stepped down into the water. Al shifted, fidgeting awkwardly with Scar's robes. Lust frowned, but quickly put it out of her mind when the boy spoke up.

“Just… promise you'll keep him safe, okay?”

Lust was taken aback by the innocent request, but then, she supposed, this was Alphonse.

“I will do what I can,” she said blankly, not well accustomed to reassuring words or softening the truth. Passing the unconscious Scar between them was easy in the water, and the cold current didn't bother her. Maybe he had a thread of a chance, now that the wound of his arm had been sealed. 

“Al! Now!” Edward was already above ground, his head poking down through the ceiling. Alphonse stuttered and gave one more nervous glance to Lust, then to Scar, before backing to the stairs to join his brother.

After a moment of silence, sparks began to fly around the edges of their makeshift entrance. The ceiling shifted, slamming shut as it was alchemically closed off, leaving Scar and Lust in darkness and, she prayed, solitude.

Decrepit electric lights lining the walls of Liore’s underground reservoir system did little to combat the darkness. Lust’s eyes adjusted easily, flashing in the low light. All was quiet, save for the echoing current of running water. It was a welcome change, after today.

What a ridiculous corner she had backed herself into, cradling her half-dead brother in law in an underground stream. 

“Can you hear me?” Even lowered, her voice felt disruptive in the quiet of the tunnel.

“Where are the Elric brothers?” 

Lust made a noise something between a sigh and a chuckle. Could anything distract this man?

“Fleeing west, if they know what's good for them.”

Scar's eyes, red and irritated, finally opened. His throat was desperately hoarse.

“It worked?”

“Perfectly.”

With her confirmation, some long strained thread in Scar snapped. A great release of emotion, cathartic and cleansing, squeezed his throat and chest. He had succeeded. His own survival of the ordeal be damned, Alphonse had lived.  _ Liore _ had lived. Forced into diaspora, out of home, and under the radar of Amestris, but they had their lives. It was the best he could do.

Silence returned to the tunnel for a lingering moment. Scar was grateful for the darkness. Maybe she wouldn’t notice the tight turn of his frown or the worry in his brow.

“Scar?”

He couldn’t find the spirit to respond, but the gentle patience in Lust’s voice didn’t go unnoticed. What could have possibly changed so quickly, that she would speak to him with kindness? Only an hour ago she had tried to threaten his life. 

The logic was simple, of course. Left with no path to the Stone, she would cling to the person who knew how to make one. He would never do it again, could never be convinced to do it again, but she didn’t know that. Of course she would be kind to him.

Scar could shut that out for now. Whatever persona she was playing, let her. He was tired, so  _ tired.  _ Every bone in his body ached, he couldn’t find the strength to stand, and the distant familiarity of her voice was his only source of comfort. Especially in the darkness, his weight gently supported in the water and in her arms. 

“You’re overheated. You should get your robes off and drink some water.”

His limbs were heavy as lead. Scar couldn't imagine standing right now, never mind taking care of himself. He had been heat stroked before. He would live. 

Lust, however, wasn't willing to take any risks. Human bodies were a miserable liability. What was the best way to go about this? Lust knew some of human biology, but she was no doctor. He had lost blood to a traumatic injury, run himself to the brink of consciousness, and performed dangerous alchemy, all while baking in the desert sun. He was lucky to be breathing. 

Lust gently floated Scar upright and unwrapped his shawl to pull it off his shoulders. It was heavy, and reeked of blood. She shredded it in her hands and tossed the remains into the water, letting them drift downstream and into the darkness. The fewer traces left of Scar, the better.

She took the chance to have another look at the shoulder Alphonse had mended, her fingers carefully peeling back what remained of Scar’s sleeve. Still perfect. He supported his own weight in the water, leaning against the canal's edge. He didn't protest her prodding, though Lust doubted he could have even if he wanted to.

What were her options now? The Elrics had her Stone and her locket. There was no way of getting from them as of right now. If Master so much as caught wind of her… 

An icy shudder trickled down her spine. Perhaps Master didn't have the means to kill her, but that nearly made it worse. The woman had instilled in her underlings nothing if not bitter terror, an underlying certainty that there was pain in this world Lust had never even dreamt of. It frightened her more than death, the undying isolation which had been inflicted upon Greed, the backhanded promises that the same could so easily happen to her. The military was already investigating her. If she was spotted, word could reach Master by day’s end.

Then there was Scar. In this state, he was a liability at best. Frail, exhausted, down his brother's arm, and the primary target of Amestris. The wavering thread of his life struck the balance between having some sort of ally and being completely, hopelessly alone. Right now, Lust's fear of being stranded outweighed the risk of Scar’s infamy. There had always been an empty feeling of solitude in how she related to her peers, but Lust had never truly worked alone. She would never be welcome among Dante's numbers after abandoning ship at such a critical moment.

This shell of a man, the last living witness to her humanity, was her only ally. With that thought, Lust snapped back to the present, suddenly aware that she was still standing with him in the water. 

Though sluggish, Scar seemed to be regaining some clarity. He even managed some sips of water. Clumsily, he produced a sizeable waterskin from inside his robes and fumbled the cap off to fill it. Lust decided now was as good a time as ever to discuss plans.

“There’s an Amestrian outpost two kilometers northwest of here, and the official Ishbalan camp southwest. The sooner we get moving, the less chance we have of encountering reinforcements,” she said as she pulled herself out of the water with ease. Scar remained, washing the grit and sand out of his eyes.

“Then where?” he murmured, shooting Lust a pointed if exhausted look. Her lips turned in a tight frown.

“You can return to the camp for a time. With the transfer of residents complete, it won’t be guarded. At least until you’ve recovered enough—”

“I can’t go there.”

Lust’s expression only grew more perplexed. Scar continued,

“I had no place taking refuge with Ishbala even before today. By their mercy, I was offered sanctuary. Asking for more favors after what I have done would spit in the face of their kindness.”

She frowned. Ishbalans were fiercely loyal to their own. She was reasonably certain few would bat an eye at Scar’s return, especially in such a sorry state.

“Your self inflicted exile be damned, if your people won’t have you, you’ve nowhere else to turn.”

Scar fell silent in the wake of her cutting words. Lust knew there was at least some truth to what she was saying. He needed a place to rest and recover, and she was flying blind. Right now, her only certainty was that she didn’t want this man to die. 

“If I am caught within five kilometers of that camp, it will be the military’s first excuse to kill everyone in it,” Scar finally said, his throat still harsh as he cupped another sip of water with his hand. “They were moved into Amestrian control because of me. I will not place that target on their heads.”

Lust folded her arms. It was tempting to just drag him there, anyway. They were backed against the wall, and Scar seemed to have little will to make it out of the desert alive.

As if queued by the thought, a distant rumble ended Lust’s stunted attempts at conversation. It was far away enough that she doubted Scar could even hear it, but it made her heart jump into her ears.

“We need to go,” she murmured, pushing away from the wall. Scar was quicker to respond now, and it seemed he could mostly support his own weight. He clumsily pulled himself from the water. 

His crisis of morality could wait. As the faint echoes of men’s voices trickled down the passage, Lust led Scar down the hall in silence. 


	3. Three Exiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lust makes an unlikely ally.

Faint echoes of Amestrian boots began to reach his ears.

Scar’s head felt like it could explode. His ankle, which had been grazed by a bullet back in the city, was hot and throbbing. His reflexes were dulled and his movements off balance. He had no choice but to trust Lust’s eyes and ears as they hurried through the tunnels out of Liore, and every uneven patch of brick was treacherous. More than once Scar stumbled, only to be lifted effortlessly to his feet before he could hit the ground. Lust hardly broke stride. With what few details of the situation he could process, he found himself thankful for her presence. For her help. 

If Scar was going to die today, it wouldn’t be on Amestris’ terms.

The faint electric light around them started to get stronger, supplemented by what Scar could only hope was the sun filtering through their exit. Then the tunnel began to slope upward, and the light was warmer. He squinted against it, eyes searing at the change after being in the dark for so long. Fresh air rustled against his hair, and in spite of his limited senses, Scar knew they had made it outside.

He fought to open his eyes as Lust hastily pulled him away from the entrance. They had emerged far beyond the outskirts of Liore, the tunnel emptying to a ruined stone structure similar to the one Edward and Rose had been instructed to pass through. Broken pillars scattered on a mostly buried stone floor. There were no signs of life, and the dunes towering around them provided cover from any eyes on the horizon.

He turned his attention back to the door at the gritty sound of metal on rock. Lust was cutting a slab out of the ruined wall. Once done, she gave it a firm push, and it slammed down over the tunnel’s entrance. It would buy them some time. She approached again before speaking,

“Freight trains cross through this area. We’ll move west until we run into tracks. That will be our best chance to get out of the desert undetected.”

Scar frowned, avoiding her eyes. He could tell she was looking him over.

“Can you walk on your ankle?”

“You’ve done enough,” he mumbled, brushing past her. He didn’t need her prying about some scrapes. Scar shuffled ahead, taking this moment to look himself over for the first time since the transmutation. This wasn’t how today was supposed to end, but now that he was removed from the chaos, Scar could tell himself with certainty that he couldn’t have made any other choice. He didn’t need the Stone. Maybe he could make it without his arm.

More than anything, Alphonse deserved to live.

It was hazy, but it was coming back to him. The boys had been there briefly, before he and Lust had escaped. Edward had opened the way underground. Alphonse had closed his arm and carried him down the stairs, lowered him into the water to cool off—

Scar’s hand shot to his pocket, where he could feel the distinct outline and weight of the locket. When had it gotten there? His jaw clenched as he racked his failing memory. He’d given it to Alphonse, who’d brought him down into the tunnel… and slipped it into Scar’s robe when Lust and Edward were talking. She couldn’t possibly know about it, or she would have followed the Elrics—

“You’re out of your mind if you think you can make it on your own.”

“ _I know._ ” 

Lust froze. Scar hadn’t meant to snap, but the realization that the locket was back on his person sat like a rock in his throat. He couldn’t tell her. She’d just turn around and chase the boys, and he would be powerless to keep them safe.

The horizon spun as he turned to watch her. She wasn’t threatening him. What did she want?

“Then what is this to you?” she asked, paused where the stone ruins faded into sand at her feet. “If you came here only to die, there are methods far less painful.”

Her words landed. The prideful anger in his chest faded. 

“What does it matter?” he countered, “You said so yourself. I’ve nowhere to go.”

There was nothing for him here or anywhere. No forgiveness was waiting for him in this life or the next. His anger subsided to resignation.

“I have served my purpose. I do not seek death, but I won’t turn it away as it comes.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she insisted, brow creasing. “As long as there’s any chance of survival at all, it would be asinine to throw it away.”

Uncomfortable silence followed. He had no answers to her questions, or rebuttals to her points. God, he barely had the strength to stand!

“I’m tired, Scar,” she finally said, “Maybe I don’t need sleep or food or water like you do, but I feel it in my bones, like it’s eating me from the inside out.” Whatever pretenses Lust had been carrying, they had dropped. Scar suddenly felt small, the stoney set of his brow cracking. “For fifteen years I’ve dedicated myself to nothing but this fool’s errand. Today was the closest I’ve ever come, and it was still beyond my reach.”

She paused, lips pulled down in a pained frown. Her hands curled into fists.

“I threw away everything for this chance. Now I’m faced for the first time with _proof_ that I was once something more than this miserable half life, that I...”

She trailed off, eyes wandering away from Scar’s, and a dozen objections sprang to the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't bring himself to voice them.

“I'm not going to leave you out here,” she finally muttered. 

Scar could only stand in silence. He found it hard to believe that there was no greater plan, no next step. That they were stranded out here with nothing but each other. 

But there was raw desperation in Lust's words, and it was so unlike the facades with which she had approached him in the city. Doubt lingered in the back of Scar’s mind, but for now, he couldn’t protest. Maybe she wanted some sort of response to her outpouring, but there was nothing more he could say. Scar couldn’t put it all into words even if he wanted to, especially right now, of all times. He forced his body up the hill, heavy footsteps slipping in the sand. Let her follow if she wanted to. 

After a decade of navigating the eastern edge of Amestris on his own, his legs knew the way. Hours of sunlight still lay ahead. Scar wasn’t sure which he dreaded more, blinding heat or icy darkness. His stomach churned, and the horizon spun and blurred. Blisters burned his feet and sweat drenched through his robe. That was good. As long as he was sweating, he wasn’t dead yet. 

The unlikely pair marched in silence, Scar in resigned exhaustion and Lust close in tow.

—

“There’s something on the horizon,” Lust said, startling Scar. He had been watching the ground at his feet for the last hour. Hour? Ten minutes? He’d mostly forgotten she was even here. How long had they walked? 

He offered no response. Maybe they would reach it. Maybe they wouldn't. He didn’t even think to wonder what it was that they were approaching. Scar’s headache was worsening again, and patches of gray and black threatened the edges of his vision. He reached into his robe for his water, but it fumbled in his hands and fell. The lid held, but as Scar crouched to pick it up, the world shifted. 

His lingering exhaustion rushed over him, and that was all he would remember.

For Lust, this game was growing wearisome. It seemed Scar would continue to refuse and ignore her help unless he was, quite literally, unconscious. Lust watched with exasperated nonchalance as he collapsed trying to retrieve his water from the ground.

Now they could make real progress.

She plucked the waterskin out of the dust and hoisted Scar over her shoulder. His size was cumbersome, but the weight was no issue. Lust bent her knees and leapt weightlessly across the expanse of dry earth. The sun was sinking over the horizon now, and she was growing tired of shuffling through the middle of nowhere. Now that she needn't contend with Scar’s pride, they could reach the Ishbalan camp in the distance all the many times faster. Loose sand turned to dirt and stone. Low brush and the occasional burrow of a small animal scattered the ground. Vegetation was growing more regular.

The outlines of the camp grew more and more clear. Makeshift tents and heavy canvas drapes formed tiny, uneven streets. Lust slowed her pace. Visibility was getting low, but she didn't need to run any risks of taking a high profile. She crested a small hill overlooking the encampment. Lanterns were lit for the evening. There was chatter, singing in the background. Lust lingered outside the settlement perimeter, Scar still over her shoulder. She had gone against his wishes and taken him here, but he was better off angry at her than dead.

Now that she was here, eyeing the village from a careful distance, Lust realized that she didn’t want to be here, either.

One tiny domicile sat apart, opposite the hill from the rest of the camp. Lust crept toward it, holding her breath to listen for some sign of life. When there was none, she rested Scar on the ground and slipped through the cloth doorway. At the very least, she could find him something to eat.

A dusty lantern flickered on the ground. Carefully laid stones and scrap wood formed a desk, which was littered with scattered papers, scribbles Lust couldn't make out at a glance. The draped walls were just as covered, pinned with notes and torn pages and manically assembled diagrams.

Circles…

Lust’s eyes widened in rare surprise. It was alchemy. All of it was alchemy. She scanned the desk, the floor, the walls, instinctively trying to gather some idea for what this person was studying, but she had never seen any of it before.

She turned to the wall by the door, and her eyes latched onto one diagram in particular. Frigid, misplaced fear rooted Lust's feet to the ground. She knew the lines of it, fanned curves and intersecting arcs. Her eyes were wide, breath shallow, then the room was gone—

_White hot agony sliced through every nerve of her disfigured body. She couldn't move, but she could see them: crude black lines on the floor forming an intricate circle around her._

_But that hardly mattered, right now. There was an altercation at the door. Someone was rushing inside. His voice was younger than the other, terrified and confused. That was his brother… Her mind thrashed wildly for a name, but none would surface._

_Why couldn't she remember? Why did every passing moment feel like she was being torn apart? It was dark and cold, why had he left? He would never leave her alone like this!_

Lust gasped for air, tearing her eyes from the human transmutation circle pinned to the wall. The air around her was stifling. She slumped against the desk, sweat dripping down her back and brow. Staring at the floor, Lust hurried out of the tent.

Those were the memories she hated most.

The open evening air filled her lungs, followed by the familiar sensation of returning to her body after slipping away. Lust pushed her hair back over her shoulders, making some attempt to compose herself as she returned to Scar.

There was a figure crouched over where he lay.

Lust's hand snapped out, claws springing forward with pinpoint accuracy on either side of the figure's head. They buried into the ground behind him with a thud, and the man froze, perfectly still.

The wind held its breath as the seconds ticked by, Lust silently daring the stranger to move.

Instead, he laughed.

“I'm no threat, homunculus.”

Lust frowned, lips parted in surprise. His voice was rusted and weary, fearless in the face of her threat. He pulled his hood back with a shaky hand, revealing the deeply lined face of an old man. A crude tattoo arched across his face.

He had an Ishbalan’s eyes.

“Who are you?” Lust's question was suspicious, but non—aggressive in spite of the talons still poised at his head.

“I'm nobody. Exiled. Like this battered soul.” He glanced down to Scar, who still lay unconscious, before looking back to Lust. His grin revealed several missing teeth. “Like you.”

Lust's frown pulled tight. Her claws retracted, and the old man struggled to his feet.

“Get this one inside.” He nodded to Scar. “No sense sitting around in the dirt…”

He shuffled toward the door of his tent, but Lust still hesitated. She didn't want to go back in there.

“You broke in once already, I know I don't need to _invite_ you in,” he snickered before ducking inside. Was this a mad way of offering help? How was he so immediately sure of what she was? Of _who_ she was?

Not seeing another reasonable choice, Lust picked up Scar and carried him inside the tent. She averted her eyes from the wall by the door and set Scar on a bed of blankets indicated by the old man. He immediately set to work with a pail of water and a washcloth, dabbing the dirt from Scar's face.

Lust folded her arms and backed away, making herself small. Her skin was crawling— thoughts and whispers threatening to bubble up in the back of her mind. Soon, the unease would pass, and the scene that had just flashed before her eyes would fade into the quilt of her memory like it had always belonged there. For the moment, however, it felt like she had just woken from a nightmare.

“What's become of his brother's arm?”

The old man's voice pried Lust back to the present. How did he know to even ask?

“Transferred to another host,” she managed, trying to focus on anything but the sights and sounds simmering on the edge of her consciousness. 

He turned to eye Lust, his stare ghostly.

“Did he complete it?”

She nodded.

“The wound on his arm was alchemically sealed,” she pointed out. The man pulled away Scar's robes, eyes widening when the clean, healed skin of his shoulder became evident.

“By God…” he murmured, facing Lust with an air of wonderment, “And where do you fit into this?”

Her lips pursed. The question had come from nowhere, and it was quickly becoming obvious that this man knew an uncomfortable amount about both of them.

“I don't,” she said simply. It was true, in a way. And she didn't owe this man her life’s miserable story, certainly not as it pertained to the man in her memories and his younger brother.

“They both spoke of a woman.” He stood to his full, hunched height, and Lust frowned. “Stricken by illness. She would have been your age, I imagine...”

He moved closer, raising the lantern to Lust’s face. She scoffed and stepped back, but her eyes retracted into sharp slits in the glow, and the man’s withered features came to life with fascination.

“He said he had failed…”

“Well he didn't _succeed_ ,” Lust snapped, her gaze turning cold. She wasn't a specimen for an aging alchemist to examine. A harsh silence followed, her expression stony when she eventually spoke, “Scar has a wound on his ankle. It hasn't been cleaned.”

She breathed a sigh of relief when that distracted him from his questioning. The old man grunted as he returned to Scar’s bed of blankets. His pant leg clung to his skin with thickened blood as fabric was pulled away, revealing a wound far uglier than Lust would have guessed. A deep, angry gouge ran just above Scar’s ankle where the bullet had grazed his leg. And he had continued to walk?

“Damn fool…” she muttered, entirely to herself. Even a hair slower and he would be dead. 

The man opened a small bottle, likely alcohol, and poured it over the gash while he scrubbed it with a clean cloth. In spite of the circumstances, he was remarkably resourceful. Lust supposed he had no choice but to be. She debated internally before speaking up, unsure if she wanted to return to the subject of alchemy, but unable to stifle her curiosity.

“You would choose alchemy over your own people?” Her tone was almost clinical. This was her depth. She was the one doing the questioning, not him. Like it or not, Lust was an exceptionally rare case among homunculi, being a creation of Ishbalan design. This man seemed to know something of the brothers so painfully bound to the mess of her memories.

“I haven't betrayed Ishbal,” he countered, “Knowledge of the Grand Arcanum is inseparable from our own history. The art made us everything we are; masters of our material and spiritual worlds.”

He spoke slowly as he cleaned and dressed Scar’s wounds, as if to be sure she didn't miss a word.

“The rise of the country we now call Amestris is to blame.”

Lust’s folded her arms. He had captured her attention.

“How so?”

“What they would call alchemy revolves around their practice of ‘equivalent exchange,’ yet in their self imposed superiority they overlook their own law’s fundamental flaw.”

He thumbed through a small notebook, its pages rumpled and worn. Each seemed to feature a slightly different transmutation circle.

“‘In order to obtain, something of equal value must be lost.’ It is a crude attempt at understanding conservation of mass and energy. However, as Amestris refines its alchemy, its attention to other practices of science fell to the wayside. Study of medicine, the physical world, even politics, became engrossed in the art. Alchemy could fix anything, as long as you had enough materials to do it.”

He touched a withered hand to the circle in his notebook, and in a soft glow of light, a clean piece of fabric reworked itself into one long strip. A bandage.

“But a carpenter cannot simply demand that a pile of scrap fashion itself into a home. An Amestrian would argue that it is their study: that their knowledge of the art, years of research and practice, serve as a price to pay for their transmutation. For a people supposedly too intellectually advanced for faith, such an arrogant conclusion is ironically rooted in nothing more than superstition. It's a myth, spread to drive bright-eyed students to enlist and let their less fortunate know their place:

“If you have great power, you have earned it. If you keep your head down, no ill shall come of you. If you die by our hand, you deserve it.”

He wrapped Scar’s ankle with some difficulty. Lust didn't think to offer help. None of what the man was saying had occurred to her in any form before now, but what was Amestris without alchemy? She couldn't fathom it. Her gut said he was wrong. Even when Dante railed against Equivalent Exchange, she only scolded it as a philosophy, not as a law of science. How could generations of successful alchemists be fundamentally wrong? She wanted to argue, but even within her own mind, she was grasping at straws.

“Alchemy _is_ the god of Amestris, though they would never say as much. I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions. As their influence spread eastward, it poisoned our own perception of the Grand Arcanum. It was labeled blasphemy. ”

The old man’s words made a great deal more sense than the Amestrian scholarship she had read on the subject of alchemy in Ishbal. Suddenly, the ban had context. Lust imagined there must have been more factors at play, but his core concept made sense. Even with this simple revelation, she had the sense that she was only treading water in a far deeper, far darker ocean.

One technicality still bothered her.

“You said that the law of equivalent exchange is flawed,” she pointed out, “How does the alchemist transmute if they are completely unaware of this energy which must be channeled?”

Lust could tell he had more to say, but was hesitating as he tied off the last of Scar’s bandages.

“This is where I admit my own ignorance, I'm afraid. There is a force. A greater entity responsible for the balance, which all of humankind is connected to. That is where the alchemist’s power innately comes from. But if more was ever known, it's long been lost to time…”

He trailed off as he rested a blanket over Scar, who still barely stirred. 

“Years ago, his brother spoke of a doorway. You wouldn't know anything of it, would you?”

Lust pursed her lips. Of course she knew the Gate. It was the closest thing there ever would be to what a human might call God. The pinnacle of alchemic understanding. Lust had only faint images— a weight which crept over the back of her mind if she dug too deep, but there was never anything there beyond crippling, strangling darkness. It was stronger here, in this place which forced her to remember, but the reality of the Gate was still little more than abstract fear. 

She shook her head.

The old man surveyed her for another moment, not convinced but apparently unwilling to push. His knees popped as he stood upright, turning away from Scar. Lust forced down the uneasy buzz in the back of her mind.

“Will he live?” Her question was tentative, and it hung in the air like smoke even though it had been heavy in her throat.

“The Philosopher’s Stone transcends any known convention of physical matter. In a person, it can act as a source of vigor, even healing.”

That wasn't an answer.

“If he wakes up, he won't have the strength he has grown accustomed to. He certainly won't be fit for surviving alone. Not with his reputation.”

It wasn't anything different from what Lust had assumed, and it wasn't reassuring at all. Taking lives was so much easier than saving them, especially when they were so readily thrown away.

She nodded, then turned to leave the tent. She wanted to be free of the whispers creeping at her consciousness, but the relief quickly faded into irritation as the old man followed. Lust supposed she was the first new person he had to talk to in weeks, perhaps months, but her energy for social engagement had quickly reached its end. She settled on a large bed of stone overlooking the encampment, and only spoke up when he shuffled up next to her.

“How many cold shoulders do I need to turn before I am left alone?”

Her eyes darted to the side when he settled clumsily a few meters away.

“You can’t dodge an old man’s questions forever, especially after I answered yours. I never thought I would live to see a completed homunculus.”

“Do not mistake me for complete,” she muttered as she watched the lights in the settlement fade one by one. 

“I've seen a backfired human transmutation. You are something much more than that. How?”

He wasn't going to stop, was he?

“Shards of the Stone,” she said simply. Now that it dawned on her, it wasn't entirely unlike how the incomplete Stone sustained Scar. Why he was so crippled by its loss. “Without them, I would not have taken human shape.”

And, she supposed, died shortly after. It wasn't as chilling a thought as it ought to have been. Surely, whatever came beyond this couldn't be worse. Whatever quiet she had been so crudely pulled from, her body malformed and her mind torn apart.

“Neither of them mentioned—"

“It wasn't the brothers’ doing,” she interjected, folding her arms. She was never one for discussing any of this, and lately it turned a sour note in her stomach. She could remember loving the man who created her, but memories only had so much sway on her emotions. The distant recollection of his face, his voice, his personality only made her reality all the more painful.

How dare he? How dare he think he had the right to her life? The power to change it so? Where had his alchemy been when she was sick? In pain? Scared? What good had it done her? Lust's fingers curled tightly against her arms. The weight which had settled in her chest so often lately had returned with a vengeance. 

Had he even loved her? Or just the idea of her? The thought put an awful burden on her fragile sense of self. Would he be satisfied with her as she was, mind shattered but her physical form mostly intact? He wouldn’t be the first she had known, chasing nothing more than a dead commodity. Uncomfortable silence fell over them both, though Lust suspected he hardly noticed. Her rapidly spiraling thoughts were cut off when he shuffled to his feet.

“You eat?”

She finally turned to properly regard him, frowning at the non sequitur.

“Excuse me?”

“I'm fixing dinner.”

Without another word, he shuffled away, leaving Lust in perturbed silence. No, she technically didn't need to eat, but there was no sense in wasting the limited energy of the Stones. When would she have access to them again? She couldn’t find the care to worry about it. Not right now. This was her first quiet moment in days, and her mind was buzzing in a dozen different directions. 

Everyone would be after them. Not just the military, but the other homunculi. The Elrics would provide little diversion, and it was only a matter of time before troops were dispatched here in search of Scar. Their only advantage was how short in numbers the Amestrians would inevitably be after what Scar had done today.

The thought brought a vindictive smile to her lips. 

As long as she kept watch tonight, they could be gone before any soldiers arrived. Lust thought to simply kill them, but their not returning would be too telling. Scar’s fears would come true, and the camp would be in even more danger. The farther they could get from Liore now, the better.

Provided Scar woke up.

Tight anxiety wound in her chest again as she looked over the encampment. There was nothing she could do, at this point. Perhaps it was for the better; her choices over the last 24 hours had been rash. What would become of Gluttony? Who would look after him? She hadn’t even considered him when she turned her back on Pride. On Master’s plan. In the crashing disillusionment of her human life, he had meant nothing.

Guilt was an awful, rending sensation. It gnawed at her bones and squeezed at her throat like nothing else, and Lust rarely spared the feeling for it. But it had reared its head as the reality of killing Lujon set in, just as it crawled forward now. Would Gluttony be okay, without her? They had always been together, as long as she could remember. He was _hers_. She felt vaguely like she would be sick, and the most terrible part was that Lust knew she deserved it.

“Dinner!”

She turned to see the old alchemist peering out of the tent. Was this man she had just met actually offering to feed her? Lust scrambled for a response. She still wasn't keen to be inside.

“I'm not particularly—"

“If I don't feed a daughter staying in my home, I really am cast from God’s sight.”

His bearing told her he was completely serious. Lust balked for another moment before tentatively following him inside.

Her biggest fear immediately vanished. The room was different. All of his alchemy notes and drawings had been either covered or taken down, piled haphazardly in the corner. The dusty air smelled faintly of oil and spice, and she noticed a weathered gas burner propped on the trunk in the corner. On it, a small pan with scattered bits of leftover vegetables. His desk had been cleared, a clean cloth rolled out over it. Lust couldn't help but notice he’d given her the nicer plate.

Had he noticed that she was uncomfortable and put away his research? Or did he prefer to separate alchemy and mealtime? The latter explanation made her less fidgety as she sat on her designated floor mat, crossing her ankles neatly beside her. 

A meal was such a simple thing, a _human_ thing, but it was humbling, as she sat in awkward silence at the table he had prepared for the both of them. Flatbread and dried meat and seared greens. The old man bowed his head, eyes resting as Lust watched. She didn't know how to pray, and she didn't know what may or may not be polite, so she sat in silence.

Would she, if she knew how?

With a nod, he muttered an affirmation before digging into his dinner. They ate in silence. The sounds of the camp below had faded into the night, and a chill had taken the air. It wasn't the sort of thing a homunculus noticed, especially not in a situation as surreal as this.

“Thank you,” she murmured, uncharacteristically sheepish and starkly aware that she had done nothing to deserve being fed by this stranger.

“Mm. You should see if you can get him to stir,” he said. Lust’s eyes turned to Scar, who as far as she could tell had not moved. The old man continued as he cleared the table, “He needs water. And food, if he can keep it down.”

She nodded, rising to cross the tent and linger beside Scar. He was just sleeping, really. But he'd barely responded since falling unconscious in the desert. That couldn't possibly be normal. Humans were so delicate...

Why did it all have to happen so fast? Why did her damn memory have to fill itself in on its own arbitrary whim? Scar had asked who she was many times before, but it had never been enough to trigger the images simmering at the back of her mind. How could she have known? He was so unrecognizable from the boy in her mind’s eye that watching him now brought…

_Nothing._

It was infuriating. She crouched to her knees, perching carefully at the edge of Scar’s blanket. Lust frowned, tight lipped as she studied his features. The anxious swell in the back of her throat that often accompanied remembering was present, but nothing made itself known. Not a voice, not a face. Not a name. 

“Scar?”

The pseudonym suited him less every time she used it. His eyes remained peacefully closed. She thought, for a moment, that it may be kinder to let him rest. He looked younger like this, the perpetual crease of his brow at ease. When had he last slept? Hesitant, Lust rested a hand on his shoulder.

Touch was enough. Scar inhaled sharply, as if startled, and his eyes fluttered open. They were bloodshot, chapped like his lips. Lust didn't think to move her hand, but she couldn't deny the relief that washed over her when his eyes slid into focus. Her lips parted in a tiny, unconscious smile.

“You've had quite the day.” Her eyes lingered on his, expectant. She failed to notice their host leaving the tent. Scar lay quietly, eyes searching hers, looking like he may say something but was struggling for the words. When he did speak, his voice was choked and raspy.

“ _Water_.”


	4. Regrouping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scar takes a rare, desperate moment to breathe.

If Scar had dreamed, he couldn't remember it. It hadn’t been normal sleep. He felt an eternity had passed since parting ways with Edward, Rose, and Lyra...

Lust’s eyes intently on his startled Scar fully awake. He struggled in the confusion that followed deep sleep, dry eyes sore as his brow furrowed. 

“ _Water_ ,” he whispered, throat burning as he formed the word. His head fell back against the pillow as he became more aware of himself and the pain he was in. His ankle was red hot. Cuts and bruises were making themselves known all over. The missing weight of his arm caused a system—wide discomfort he couldn't place. It _hurt_. 

Lust returned quickly with his refilled water pouch. Scar slowly propped himself upright, sipping water to chase away the pounding in his head. It was several still moments before he collected himself to some level of lucidity.

“Where are we?” Shelter, clearly, but it was much too lived in to be anything she had just come across. 

“We’re at the camp.”

Scar's bleary eyes snapped back to Lust’s. What was she thinking?

“I said—"

“I know perfectly well what you said, and this was the only civilization nearby. Had I any other choice, I would have taken it.”

He glanced over her shoulder, eyes wide in a mix of anger and panic. Nobody else was here…

“I've been keeping watch. If Amestris is coming here, we’ll see them long before they can see us.”

She trailed off, and Scar recognized her uncomfortable silence as she looked away.

“An old alchemist took you in and cleaned your wounds. He knows you. And he guessed my identity immediately. Who is he?”

“An exile of Ishbal,” Scar explained, “Years ago, he shared his knowledge of creating the Stone with my brother. I met him by chance. He explained the nature of my arm to me.”

If this was his home, that meant they were at least separate from the rest of the group. While it was true that Scar's primary motivation was their safety, he dreaded the thought of facing them again. What would his master say? What could he possibly tell him? He had washed his hands of them then crawled back from Liore with his tail between his legs. God Himself wouldn't grant him death's mercy. 

_A man who inflicts suffering cannot rest._

He truly had damned himself, hadn’t he? What humanity could be left in one man who had taken so much life? He had turned his back on any hope of finding peace for the sake of those powerless under Amestris’ thumb, but now, with his arm gone, what use could he possibly be? He couldn’t protect anyone, not even himself. All that was left was a shell.

He should have died in Liore.

“Scar?”

Lust’s voice, barely above a whisper, startled him. His face must have betrayed some hint of his thoughts. The memory of her was like static on a radio teetering in and out of range. It had been fifteen years. Half his lifetime. Her face had been far easier to brush aside when she had been callous and cold and unfamiliar, but something had changed. 

The maelstrom of the past day was finally starting to form in a solid timeline. The disjointed panic, gunfire, shouts of soldiers and civilians… The blur of panic had subsided. Sitting here in the near darkness with this woman who should have been a stranger, what precious little that remained of Scar’s constitution was falling apart. He drew his legs up, noting for the first time that he was on a soft sleeping mat. His ankle was on fire.

“I hated my brother.” The words, seeming to come from nowhere, spilled out before he could think to stop them. There was an awful pinch in his throat as he struggled to speak. “I hated him so much. He turned his back on Ishbala. On his family. All for the sake of alchemy…” He couldn’t bring himself to look at Lust, though he could feel her eyes on him, her face level with his. The living, breathing result of his brother’s gravest sin. His hubris. His pride.

She said nothing. Scar swallowed, forcing back the quiver in his throat and the burning behind his eyes as reality broke slowly over him.  

“I would have died, without his arm. Transmuting it onto my body killed him. He saved my life with his own and in all of my hate I still couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive him for what he’d done.”

Tears welled in Scar’s eyes, but they didn’t spill over. His mouth twisted into a thin line, eyes focused on nothing. He was frozen. He was terrified. 

“The Elric brothers live only for each other.”

“That’s true.” Lust’s voice, calm in the face of his pain, soothed the burning in Scar’s throat. 

“Seeing them take care of each other… Love each other…” His wavering voice broke. It _hurt_ to say it, but he had to. It had been stewing inside, eating at him for too long. Maybe nothing he was saying made sense, maybe she didn't care, but he couldn't keep it alone in his mind any longer. He couldn’t force down the flood of regrets responsible for so many sleepless nights. 

“I wish I could have told him how much I love him.” 

Scar never let himself cry. He couldn't remember the last time he had, and certainly no one ever saw when he did. He had relinquished the right to that comfort years ago, but all of a sudden, the pain was too much to hold. Tears slipped down his cheeks in flickering lantern light, and his head lowered in shame. Breathing came in harsh bursts as Scar desperately swallowed his sobs. If he tried to move, he was fairly certain he would fall apart entirely.

Until now, he had never truly realized what a comfort his right arm had been. It was, after all, his brother’s. And it was a part of him. A steady reminder. Now, as Scar reached for it and found nothing, hand swinging uselessly in thin air, the reality set in that he truly was gone. There was nothing left. Nothing except...

“That’s why you did the same for Alphonse,” Lust added quietly. If she was bothered by Scar’s tears, she hid it well. He was grateful for it, and he dared to meet the homunculus’ eyes again, his own red and swollen. She betrayed no emotion, but she was… present. Listening. Whatever aloof, carefully cultivated persona Lust so meticulously maintained was undetectable. It was such a small and strange thing, a frighteningly intimate thing when he was in such a state, but he didn't shy away. 

“I had no choice,” he murmured, hoarse with exhaustion. Scar breathed deeply, trying to steady himself as he studied Lust for a reaction. 

“I know,” she finally said, eyes turning down. 

The silence had turned uncomfortable, but it lingered. Scar was relieved he hadn’t broken down completely, but beneath that, he felt lighter. A tiny fraction of the burden had finally been shed. What was done was done. 

“Where have they gone?” he whispered, still studying Lust with weary interest. 

“Resembool. Their home.”

“That's the first place the military will look.”

The sour turn of Lust’s lips eased. “Alphonse wanted to bring you with him.”

Scar’s tired eyes softened as something warm trickled through his chest. Of course Alphonse would suggest such a thing. 

“I'm sure Edward put that down immediately,” he remarked. 

“You know him well,” she replied with a sharp smirk, briefly meeting Scar's eyes before standing to peer out the tent flap. 

“I don't know where our host has gone, but he's offered you food. He even fed me. Refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. I think he's fascinated by my… condition.” 

Scar was certain he would be sick if he ate anything right now. He weakly reached for the water pale, throat still burning.

“We will set out by morning. Once I've had the chance to thank him properly.” Scar coughed into his sleeve. It made all the pulled muscles in his torso all the more evident. Lust frowned.

“If you're stable by morning. I said I would keep watch. Stop worrying about the military.”

“I will stop worrying about the military when they are all dead,” he snapped. It wasn't an exaggeration. Lust sighed, folding her arms.

“You may not have your brother's arm, but you have me. Whether you like it or not, I have the advantage of anonymity, and I can keep you and yours safe. And should the worst happen, it'll take more than bullets to kill me.”

It was impossible to miss the smug note dripping from her voice as she cast him a self-satisfied glance. She wasn't just going to forget about that, was she? Scar’s jaw clenched. The wall of the tent was remarkably interesting all of a sudden.

“You know what happened,” he growled. Of course his subconscious mind struggled with her. She looked the same, more or less. Her voice was the same. It had been a reckless reflex. Nothing more. 

For a blissful moment, he thought that would put an end to it. Then she spoke up again. 

“Did you have feelings for me?”

A horrid weight settled in Scar’s chest. He couldn't tell if she was mocking him or genuinely curious.

“That's a bold assumption,” he managed, still glaring a hole in the tent wall. 

“Is it?”

Scar didn't have a good answer. For a split second, nothing else had mattered. Not his goal, not his life, not the simple logic of the situation. There had only been _her._

“Not you,” he finally admitted, intent gaze drifting far away. Scar understood her nature, now. Who she was. Who she wasn't. Maybe his nostalgia, his grief, had yet to catch up, but he knew on some intellectual level that Lust could not possibly have ever been human. A face meant so little when the laws of nature themselves were rewritten.

But God, he had pleaded, begged for even a shadow of her to remain. It sickened him to the core, how badly he had hoped for some sign of his brother's success. Death was the domain of God and God alone. Who was Scar to wish otherwise? Nevertheless, he had crossed the desert for the locket which now sat heavy in his robes. He had spent night after night wondering. How could he not? How could he pretend she didn't exist, especially as their paths had grown more and more tangled? 

“That's an awfully grand gesture for a fake,” she remarked coldly. 

“Then stop needling me with questions when you never like the answers.” Scar finally met her eyes again. He was too exhausted for this. Lust seemed hell—bent on discussing the deepest nature of her existence, and Scar wanted nothing more than to sleep for a month. Of course she couldn't understand that.

Another uncomfortable silence followed. He thought maybe she would have more to say, but thankfully the subject seemed to be dropped.

“I'll keep watch.” Lust finally muttered as she left the tent, expression still stoney. She had all night to properly recount the day and plan their next move. Sleep was unnecessary, and it wasn't as if she had anywhere to rest even if she wanted to. He certainly wasn't about to offer her space in his own bed. Lust snorted to herself at the thought. 

Whatever supply route trailed all the way out here, they could loosely follow it to the train tracks. From there, it would be easy to hop a cargo train and continue westward. Traveling with a human involved was such a hassle. He would need food, shelter, a reasonable place to sleep… He would likely start _smelling_ after a while... The less time they spent wandering like vagrants, the better.

Which still begged the question: What would they do? Lust had her own goals in mind, and they all involved wriggling her way back into her Master’s reach. The Elrics would end up falling back toward her whether they tried to or not. The military would put a target on them. At the very least, Wrath and Sloth would be dispatched to track them down. Their lives weren’t in any danger yet, but it was only a matter of time before Master had the Stone. 

However, Lust wasn't about to reveal Lyra’s identity to Scar. How would he react, learning that his primary supporter had attempted to orchestrate his death? Scar was sharp; too many things would fall into place. Lust would have to explain the Fuhrer’s identity. She would have to tell him how she knew to find him out here. He would learn that it was through her very existence that Master knew to target Ishbal in the first place.

Lust would have to admit that she had never once been in control.

Any scrap of trust she had earned could be lost with one, simple admittance. Knowledge was her only leverage right now. It was an unstable game, but Lust it played well. What was one more facade on top of so many others? 

She folded her arms as she crested the hill surrounding the camp. Behind her, the old man, who had made himself scarce through Scar’s waking, slipped back into his home. The pale blue of early morning was finally trickling over the horizon. 

Perhaps they ought to go to Central through Dublith. Military presence was weak there, and they would be less likely to run into soldiers on their way. Master was too cautious to return there herself, and Scar had no history there, to her knowledge. They might even be able to snatch supplies from the mansion, but she would weigh the potential benefits of that risk later. 

The morning was slow to come. Pale blues faded to pinks then back to clear daylight as the sun rose over the path Lust and Scar had just travelled. She wasn't a stranger to overnight stakeouts, and standing around all night hardly mattered with her physiology. Still, there wasn't a sign of life on the horizon. She was thankful that no soldiers had seen Scar after the transmutation. They had no chance of knowing if he was alive, and they certainly didn't know that his arm was gone.

That also meant, with even a pinch of luck, that Master didn't know about Alphonse yet. The more she was kept in the dark, the better. Lust felt a tiny swell of pride, at that. The game had been rigged against them, but Scar had escaped with his life, and the Stone had slipped through her Master’s fingers. It came with an undeniable chill of fear, but she had claimed a small victory today, in the wake of her failings.

The camp began sputtering to life at the first sign of dawn. Stoves clicked alight and murmurs of chatter reached Lust’s sensitive ears. Satisfied that they would not be joined by intruders any time soon, she made her way back to the tent. Scar was already upright, eating and drinking. The old man, whose name she had still yet to learn, was checking a pot of water on the burner.

“Nothing is out there, yet. If they're coming after us, they're waiting to regroup. As long as Alphonse isn't caught, they likely think you have the Stone in your possession, if you're even alive.” Which made him seem a far more dangerous target than he truly was. It was yet to be seen if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

Quick, unfamiliar footsteps approaching the tent cut off any further comment. Lust whirled on her toes, fingertips at the ready—

“Lust don't—!” Scar barked. It was enough to startle her from lashing out, but Lust still stood poised until the figure peeked through the tent flaps.

It was just an Ishbalan boy. 

She exhaled, shoulders dropping as the boy stared up at her, wide—eyed. Their silent exchange of mutual surprise was short lived. The moment he noticed Scar, the boy dropped his worn leather bag from his shoulder and rushed past Lust.

“You're okay!”

“Rick, why are you here?” Scar stammered as he was poked and prodded, the boy looking over the bruises and scratches on his face. He was twelve, maybe thirteen, and he completely ignored Scar's question.

“Where did you go?”

Now more than convinced that he wasn't the threat, Lust watched with subtle bemusement as Rick licked his thumb and began rubbing a smudge of dirt from Scar's forehead. More shocking was that Scar didn't seem to mind.

The old man chuckled as he set a steeping basket of tea into the boiling pot.

“Rick has been bringing my supplies up the hill for me in the mornings.”

Scar looked to Rick for confirmation, eyebrows raised. The boy, now settled tightly next to Scar, nodded slowly.

“Grampa told me to. I don't mind. Leo wouldn't do it.” He glanced in the old man’s direction with a shy, acknowledging smile. His attention caught on Lust, who was becoming more aware with each passing moment that she was the elephant in the room.

“Who is she?” Rick leaned toward Scar when he asked the question, but his eyes lingered on Lust, not entirely trusting. Lust folded her arms to hide her mounting discomfort. It was foolish to be intimidated by a _boy_ , but she couldn’t help her welling anxiety when she met his eyes, wide and red. Even when she had mingled among humans in the past, there had always been a safe veil of removal. She was an enigma. She came and went as she pleased. Children were never part of the equation, not because she held an aversion toward them, but because they rarely intersected with her goals. The Elrics had been the youngest targets she had ever drawn toward the Stone, and by far the most hands—off.

Now, under the cautious scrutiny of this Ishbalan boy, Lust felt a small corner of her constitution folding. Her eyes darted to Scar's, a silent request for assistance. Blessedly, he seemed to get the message before she sent it. And then some.

“She saved my life,” he said quietly, eyes lingering on Lust’s for a moment before turning back to Rick. The simple acknowledgement broke through the tension in Lust’s chest, and something warm gently replaced it. She supposed he hadn’t exactly meant it, but Scar had bridged the gap as soon as it had opened. Still, Lust kept her distance as the two were reunited. Similar to her own image, she had never thought to picture Scar in such a quiet setting, picking at his breakfast and a child hanging off his shoulder.

“What happened, though?” Rick was quickly back on the subject of Scar. “You left, and you said…”

“I know what I said,” Scar replied patiently, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly, but what I said still holds true. I won’t be able to rejoin the others.”

“But…” 

“No buts.” He was firm, if gentle. “I did what I had to... Not every act of man is God’s will, so sometimes we must act outside His word to make things right. I have accepted the consequences of my actions.”

“You’re not an exile,” Rick insisted. “Just stay with us this time. You can hide when the soldiers come, and we don’t have to stay here forever. I’ll come with you! And Leo. He won’t say it, but he misses you too.”

“I've missed you both. But regardless of everything else, if I am caught here, it will be enough reason for all of you to be killed. Which is also why you can't come with me.”

Rick's face fell. He wasn't going to win this one. He leaned against Scar's shoulder, the corner of lips quivering.

“I was scared something would happen to you.” Rick turned his face into Scar's robe.

“And this is the first place the military is going to look for me. I can't protect you like this.”

“Yes you can, your arm can do anything—” Rick stopped short as he reached for Scar's far shoulder, where the drape of his robes hid his lack of arm from view. He jumped back, still on his knees in the mess of blankets. Lust could hear the shiver in his voice. “What…?”

“Someone else needed it more than I did.” It was a remarkably simple explanation for such a drastic change. Rick was on the verge of tears. 

Lust's arms crossed more tightly in front of her. She couldn't deny that this boy's troubles were, in some part, by her design. Her fault, really. Scar’s brother had been the primary target of the war, after all. Then she had exploited the situation for years after the war initially failed to produce a Stone. Lust had done the same thing not two weeks ago in Kishua. Killing Yoki had been the last straw.

The Ishbalans had thrown rocks. The soldiers had opened fire. It had felt so insignificant then, and now it made her sick to her stomach.

Lust's focus returned to Scar and the boy curled against his shoulder. The unease in her chest had returned tenfold. She shouldn't be here. She _couldn't_ be here.

More suddenly than she would have liked, Lust slipped out of the tent, turning her back on the heavy hum of guilt that was only getting louder and louder. It was too much all at once. She walked without noting where she went. 

She could never utter a word of any of it. Not Master, not Pride, not her role in the greater plan as she had ripped the Eastern Desert apart, one nation at a time. All for the Stone. All for the cure—all that was supposed to give her life some spark of purpose.

She was Ishbalan. She was supposed to be Ishbalan, and Lust was realizing in one, crushing swoop what it meant that this had been taken from her. That it had been so painstakingly kept from her. She opened her palm as she walked, a sickly weight settling in her throat at the sight of her skin. Ghostly white. Lust sneered in revulsion as a hundred tiny moments fell into place. How many men had told her she had an _exotic_ air about her? How many times had Master gently steered her away from the goings on in Ishbal, especially when she was young and impressionable? When whispers of humanity hadn't yet drowned under the pressure of this miserable half—existence? How much of her own people's suffering was her fault?

Lust had wondered, even out loud to the others, where she had come from. She supposed it was a complicated question for all of them, but had there ever been anything quite like her? Who from Ishbal would even _look_ at here if they knew what she was? Scar had been her own family, and he was disgusted by her. 

Where was she supposed to go?

This was too much too soon, after years of wondering and waiting and rushing into dead ends. She picked her head up for the first time since rushing out of the tent, gaze troubled. Rocky mountains stood between them and Amestris’ rural farm communities. The Elric brothers would be there. Maybe she could convince them to help her. She could provide protection, at the very least. And knowledge. The risk of the locket was one she would have to take.

Scar was safe. She had salvaged what she could from Liore, but there had been too much of a mess to pick up the pieces. He had made it clear that her presence wasn’t wanted. A few acts of her own selfish kindness weren’t going to change that.

Uneven footsteps behind her interrupted Lust’s thoughts. Still turned inward, Lust peered over her shoulder to see Scar, on his feet if not entirely stable. He favored his injured leg, and the telltale creases around his eyes were darker than usual. He had a bag slung over his shoulder.

She braced herself for whatever beratement he would likely hurl at her this time. She’d taken Scar here against his wishes, after all. And she’d almost stabbed that little boy. The silence between them seemed to drag as the late morning sun warmed the sand.

“You tell me not to worry myself with the military, but you’re more skittish than I am,” he finally said.

Lust frowned in surprise.

“What are you implying?”

“I’m asking who you betrayed to follow me.”

“No one.” It was an easy lie.

“I know of your affiliations with the military. I was at Lab 5. If I have homunculi tracking me, I need to know.”

“Of course not.” She spoke as if it were obvious. “Envy and Gluttony both defer to me. My colleagues and I had a disagreement on how to proceed in Liore. Enough so that we parted ways. It is as simple a matter as that.”

“Your kind do not simply _part ways_ ,” he insisted.

“So I’m lying to you?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Lust held Scar’s gaze with a hardened stare as she weighed her options.

“I know that there are others,” he continued, “Edward spoke of one called Greed. You have a wide knowledge of alchemy even though you can’t use it. You couldn’t have possibly left Ishbal alone after the transmutation. I saw—”

“You told me to stop asking questions when I never like the answers. Nothing I could say on the matter would be any kindness or convenience to you. Leave it be. For your own sake.” Her mounting frustration eased as Scar’s accusatory scowl softened. Something painful was tugging at her as she watched him, but she couldn’t place it. She never really could.

Lust looked back to the mountains in the distance. The road ahead.

“I know that I don’t belong here,” she admitted quietly, ashamed after her adamant insistence that she stay with him. “If you wish to be left to your own devices from here forward, I understand.”

Humans were so easy to read. They wore their lives on their faces, especially emotional humans like Scar. But as she studied his face for some sign of his thoughts, she couldn’t glean anything.

Maybe she was just trying too hard.

“I don’t belong here, either,” he pointed out in lieu of answering. “I’ve made my farewells. We need to get moving.” Scar continued past Lust, not acknowledging that he had just indirectly confirmed that her company would be welcome. With a tiny hint of a smile, her eyes drifted over her shoulder after him.

Lust hesitated before making her way back to the tent. She had no belongings, but a word of acknowledgement was in order. The old man was still sitting at his desk when she returned, tea steaming in a tin cup beside a journal. Rick seemed to have left. Lust was thankful for that. She hovered awkwardly at the entrance, realizing she wasn't entirely certain what would be appropriate to say.

“He doesn't sit still long,” he offered, setting down his pen. Lust's set lips quirked upward, grim if amused.

“The self flagellation never ceases,” she said. The old Ishbalan shook his head.

“He'll have his fill eventually, if it doesn't kill him first.” He met her gaze, mood still light. “See that it doesn't.”

“I'm afraid keeping men alive has never been a strong suit of mine.” Not that she had ever tried particularly hard. “But I believe I owe you thanks.”

He nodded, heavy eyes closing.

“I'm sure I haven't seen the last of you.”

“With any luck.”

It was an unceremonious goodbye, but one Lust was suited to. She slipped outside into the sunlight without another word, an unfamiliar sense of calm coming over her in the wake of her internalized confusion.

With one last passing glance to the camp in the valley, Lust followed Scar's heavy footsteps in silence.


	5. I Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of trust.

The second leg of their travel was less eventful than the first. Scar was far from fully recovered, but he was on his feet. He did his best to ignore the burning ache that came with every step on his bad foot. 

As soon as they came across train tracks, it was a simple matter of sneaking onto a freighter when it stopped for cargo pickup at a nearby quarry. Wanderers weren't uncommon on the eastern edges of central Amestris, and both Scar and Lust were well suited to keeping a low profile.

It was a slow and steady journey through what remained of the desert, then into the pitch black of mountain tunnels. Scar quickly grew used to the smell of lumber surrounding them. It even muffled the cacophony of the tracks.

It was a shame he didn't have a light. He wasn't fond of sitting in the dark, knowing that Lust could see while he couldn't.

“We'll go to Dublith.”

Scar jumped when she spoke up for the first time since they had passed under the mountain. Her voice was far closer than he would have assumed, perched just above and behind him. 

“Southern Headquarters is nearby enough that I could possibly gain some insight into the military's presumptions regarding what happened in Liore. That said, their presence is limited in the south, and I know a place we may be able to gather further supplies.”

“A connection?”

“Not exactly.” She sounded hesitant. “Call it an abandoned base.”

“That sounds like a risk.”

“It could be, but I'm afraid neither you nor I have many allies west of Resembool, unless you've a cult following you've failed to mention to me until now.” 

Scar could hear her smirk. 

“Then what?” he asked into the dark. Lust liked to give the air of control, but how far could she have possibly thought past this point? What was her goal here?

His question was met with silence, at first.

“I convince the Elrics to make me human.”

Though she spoke quietly, Lust's words were deafening in the rattling car. Scar's lips tightened, his distrust audible in his reply.

“You will not bring any harm to Alphonse.”

“I have no desire to hurt him. Or Edward. Regardless of what you may think of me, I don't relish in violence.”

“No, but you are indifferent to it.”

“A strong accusation coming from you.”

“Do not compare our methods,” Scar warned, “The Stone is theirs.”

“Then you don't get to have a say in what they do with it,” Lust countered. Scar scowled. It was difficult to place why he was even arguing, or why he objected so strongly. His base motive was true: He had no idea what using the Stone could do to Alphonse. Edward was likely to know better, but this territory was still uncharted. 

“You still wouldn't help?” Lust's quiet question and shifted tone interrupted his thoughts. 

“I have given you my answer.”

“But never an explanation.”

“Why do I owe one?”

“Because there are clearly entanglements at play that you refuse to acknowledge,” she pointed out, frustrated, “You invite me to stay with you, but you clearly don't support my goals. You're kind in one breath and accusatory in the next.”

There was nothing he could say to argue. Scar pondered in silence, fixating on the rhythmic clatter of the train's wheels. Of course there were entanglements he was hesitant to discuss! 

“Fine,” he admitted, solemn, “I have no right to determine the virtue of your choices. But you have given me no reason to trust you when those boys are involved.”

“I told you that I wouldn't hurt them.”

“But you wouldn't save them if it were inconvenient,” Scar clarified. Her logic when human life was involved was frighteningly black and white. Was it in her nature? Or something she had learned? 

Her silence said all she clearly couldn't. 

“I know that I'm not like you,” Lust finally said, cautious, “I know very little of what it means to be a human. Sometimes it all hits me at once, how desperate I am for something I don't understand.”

Scar heard her shift, then the vague outline of her settled next to him. His throat constricted. 

“But I remember some things.”

More than anything Lust had said to this point, the quiet admission struck Scar square in the chest. His eyes darted to the source of her voice, useless in the dark but out of his control. She was close. Too close, really, but it was easy to ignore when he couldn't linger on the details of her face.

“What do you mean?” he whispered, impatient for an explanation. She made a small, noncommittal hum in response.

“Images, voices… Scents, sometimes. Mostly of things toward the end. My room. Your brother. You. It's like they've been buried in the back of my mind, and sometimes the right circumstance triggers one to resurface.”

Scar sat in stunned silence. His mind was blank. Was it a lie to gain his trust? But she spoke so plainly...

“There wasn't any context for a long time. According to books, we shouldn't remember anything at all. But the locket was what did it. You showed it to me, and suddenly things fit together. I knew who I was. I knew who the man was. And the boy. And I knew it was Ishbal all along...”

The noise of the train had fallen away completely, and the silence weighed on Scar’s chest. He wanted to beg for every detail she could muster, but the mere thought of reliving those days right here with this homunculus stopped him dead. What did it mean, that she remembered?

“Why didn't you mention this?” he finally managed.

“I don't know… It was frightening, to have a lifetime shoved upon me that I never knew about… I was exactly the same for fifteen years, until all at once, I wasn’t.”

Scar was frozen where he sat, brow creased in a pained frown.

“You've had that haircut since your voice cracked,” she teased, cutting through the tension. Scar snapped out of his quiet reflection, and his face grew hot. He was once again grateful for the darkness.

“Spare me the details,” he grumbled. He didn't need a recount of whatever embarrassing nonsense he had cornered himself with as an adolescent. Scar had never been subtle in his emotions, try as he might.

“No, the details are most important,” she insisted. Scar heard her shift, then there was a tentative brush of icy fingertips on the back of his hand. An anxious coil shot through the tension in his chest, and if Scar was still before, he was a statue as Lust's hand slipped gently over his. 

Scar's thoughts faded to a static of scattered emotions that came and vanished quicker than he could process them. He could feel her apprehension, tense even in the safety of the dark. When Scar didn’t pull away, Lust’s hand eased against his, not exactly holding, but covering.

They stayed like that. Perfectly still, terrified to move.

She remembered him. Much as it threatened to tear him apart, Scar couldn't deny the warm glow of comfort that came with her revelation. It was tempting to cling to her words, to draw more out of her and vicariously take some warmth in what she saw. Would she let him? Would she even want to share?

But what good would it do him, to bury himself even further in the past? It could be outright dangerous, with this living reminder now seated apprehensively next to him. Dangerous, but tempting. Far more tempting than any suggestion she could have made back in Liore.

It seemed so long ago, already. 

“I know that this is likely the last thing you expected from me…” she continued, her voice small, “My colleagues think little of them, tell me I should ignore them and that I'll be better for doing so, but I can't keep them under the surface anymore.”

If she was looking for Scar to say something, she wouldn't have any luck. He was once again trapped in stricken silence. From the moment he had seen her in the library, he had wondered. How could he not? Edward had claimed she was an imitation. A fake.

But alchemy couldn't truly craft a living memory from  _ nothing _ . His brother had known so little of the art when he made his ill-fated attempt, how could he have managed such a thing? Scar's stomach twisted horribly, his hand clenching under Lust's. He had used her own body as material. He didn't even give her the dignity of burial, and Scar still couldn't come to terms with it all these years later. How selfish could one man be, to betray his beloved and God in one breath? It was all frightfully real again, with this woman sitting peacefully next to him.

Peacefully. It was nice.

_ Nice. _

In a moment of panic, Scar snatched his hand away, his shoulders turning inward. If she reacted, he couldn't tell, but some part of him instantly regretted pulling away. He was loathe to admit it, but wasn't Lust even more a victim of his brother's sins? Regardless of her identity, she was doomed to live as a shadow of something she would never fully understand.

And Brother had dared to call that love.

“I suppose you aren't the person to be spilling the depths of my existential woes to,” she murmured, somewhat apologetic. Scar jumped forward in his makeshift seat, taken by an impulse he couldn't quite place.

“No—”

Awkward silence. 

“No what?”

The tracks rumbled beneath them. 

“No…” Scar stumbled on his thoughts, “You can tell me that sort of thing.”

Suddenly, light poured through the flimsy slats of the cargo car. Scar squinted against it, startled from the tranced sort of quiet that had come over both of them. The train must have emerged from the tunnel. They were through the mountains. 

When his eyes adjusted, Scar looked tentatively to Lust. There had been a false sense of privacy in the dark, and now all of his misplaced anxieties were creeping at the back of his mind. Her eyes, wide with earnest, still flashed in the low light. He was grateful that she seemed to struggle with this sort of exchange as much as he did. 

“Then I suppose what I mean to say with all of this…” Lust folded her arms and stood, avoiding his gaze to peer out the wooden slats of the car. “...Is that I know what the boys mean to you. I'm not so far from human that I can't grasp emotional connection, or compassion, even if I have little experience with it. I won’t bring harm to them. You have my word.” Her tone was definitive, even if Scar’s brow still creased with a weary frown.

“Thank you,” he murmured. That was good enough for Lust.

Master's reasoning in Liore was falling better into place. Of course Lust hadn't been sent to deal with Scar directly. Master had known of their entanglements long before Lust had. She had been a liability in Liore. It also explained why her word had meant nothing, when it came down to their final decisions. Lust grit her teeth. Now that the initial panic of running from the others had subsided, she was becoming more and more convinced that she had made the right decision, even from a purely tactical stance. She had outgrown them. She didn't need them to regain what she had lost. She had always been brighter than any of them, anyway. Lust would become human on her own terms. She wasn't going to bother sorting through the difficult details right now. She could make it happen in her own time. The only reason Liore had gone so far south was because she hadn't been in charge. 

Lust knew, in the back of her mind, that she likely would have only exacerbated the situation further, but she could afford to stoke her own ego for a moment. It was finally sinking in that they really had gotten away. 

Time crept by as the old freighter slowly crossed the Amestrian countryside. Lust pulled the rolling door open, pushing her hair over her shoulders as the wind whipped her bangs. It was good to see the sun. Amestris’ farmlands were a quiet and welcome respite from gunfire in her ears and grit in her hair. There were few people to worry about. Small herds of grazing animals passed them by, uninterested. Lust settled on the edge of the car, feet dangling out the door as the sun warmed her face. It would be a while yet until they reached Dublith, but she could stand the wait. 

She glanced over her shoulder to Scar, who was still lurking in the dark, watching her from a safe distance. He looked down once their eyes met, suddenly interested in his shoes. 

It wasn't the first time she had caught him watching her, but she had no idea what to make of it. Men stared. Of course they did. But Scar seemed to examine her more like she was a particularly baffling math problem than a woman. Lust couldn't decide if it irritated her or not. She hesitated before speaking up again, knowing she may be testing his patience but unable to help herself. 

“Are you always this shy when a woman seeks out your company, or am I a particular exception?”

Lust mildly observed Scar for a reaction. She was quickly learning that his lexicon for facial expression contained little more than a series of frowns, but she didn't miss his flustered glance in her direction.

It was ridiculous, but his words kept repeating in her mind.  _ You can tell me that sort of thing. _ Envy usually told her to let it go. Gluttony wasn't a strong conversational companion. And who else did she have, really? Musings stewed and fermented in her mind until they drove her mad. With a simple affirmation from Scar, some of the weight had lifted. He hadn't even told her she was being dramatic or foolish, even though she knew she was. 

Reaffirming her question, Lust patted the dusty floor beside her. This old freighter moved at a comparative crawl to any modern passenger train. The sun and the breeze would be good for him. 

Scar stood gingerly and crossed the car. He sat not next to her, but against the opposite side of the broad sliding door. It was good enough for Lust. She adjusted the fold of her legs, gaze distant as fields and farms crawled by. For now, the silence between them was comfortable. Her emotions had spun out of her control so many times in the last couple of days that she was grateful for an opportunity to just  _ be _ . 

And Scar was good for quiet company. 


End file.
